A Madness In The World
by Sliver
Summary: To those who never found freedom.


**A Madness In The World**

***********

### I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep

I haven't anything to say, really. Just that I hate this place, with its soft walls and clean astringent and false leering smiles. The orderlies, they hate me too, although I can hardly blame them. I'm sure I don't make their jobs easier. One of them has a half-moon on the skin between her thumb and fingers---I bit her when she tried to take my pencil. None of them tried after that. I guess they just didn't think it was worth it. Nobody cares if I mark up the walls in here. I'm another loony in the markdown bin. Hell, I don't even have a window. I used to, but I can't look outside without feeling the things that landed me here in the first place. So I put my fist through a wall and they threw me in here. Everyone said I was feeling angry at my confinement, but that isn't true. I'm one of the few who _know_ I'm crazy. I can't be sane, since that would mean everyone else is crazy. And the world can't be run by crazy people, now can it? So they put me in here. I want to leave sometimes, but I have to remember that it would be dangerous for other people if I did. I stay in here because I have to. It's right to keep what I see to myself.

**And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.__**

**_ _**

I watch the little figures on the television set in the green room. Everything there is green, but it's a good green. Not the bad bright green. It's a pale color, like faded trees or public bathrooms. The linoleum and tile are all green and cool and slick. I prefer the TV room over my room. Nell says its vomit green, but since they only feed us pale food I've never seen that particular shade when someone makes herself throw up. Lois does that a lot—she's bulemic, so her father put in here. She doesn't belong, she's not nuts, but her dad's rich so he hides her in here. We get along okay, because I don't talk much and she likes to cry and talk about her life outside. I want to tell her there is no real life outside of this place, no real life at all, but if one of the orderlies heard me talking like that I'd get in trouble. I don't feel like acting up most of the time—I think it's the drugs. Of course, it occurs to me sometimes that if I'm not crazy, then there aren't any real drugs in my body, and I should be okay. Actually I feel better when I forget I'm crazy. The world makes more sense then, and all the going nowhere and running in circles has a reason. There must be an end somewhere, but I can't see it. I think maybe sometimes that I'll just live forever if I stay here where nothing ever changes.

### I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once

I'd better stop writing about these things. My doctor gave me this book, so I could write my thoughts down. If I had to show it to him I'd write differently, about how good I feel and how the hallucinations don't come to me anymore, but since I don't I think I will talk about the things that happen in here. But if he takes it without asking I don't want to get in trouble. Nothing interesting really today, but sometimes the drugs, if they are drugs, get to me sometimes, and I forget. Like what the outside was like. All I remember is that it was green. Everyone tells me they were trees, but I can't remember that well. I remember the flower stand and looking up and seeing the sky was full of holes, big ugly gaps, then fainting and waking up with a police officer standing over me. I tried to talk about what I saw then too, but no one listened and they gave me a doctor. A little while after that they put me in here. But I remember seeing lots of holes, everywhere, inside people, eaten away inside by green things.

**Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,**

Lois tells me I'm pretty. I don't think so, although I bet I used to be. My eyes are green, dark good green, and my hair was red but it's faded a little now. My tan is gone too, which makes the freckles stand out like you wouldn't believe. I hate them, but when I get bored I can count them and that passes the time. I wish I looked like the orderly I bit. She has pretty black hair and perfect skin. Not since I bit her, though. Maybe if I was beautiful I wouldn't be in here. I could have been a model. I wouldn't have ruined my eyes sitting so close to the computer screen, so that they saw things no one else could.

**That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;__**

I wish they had let me have my computer in here, but it was confiscated along with the rest of my things when the ambulance came to take me away. The black men and the white men, then the green men. They're here, the green men, in their shirts and pants. Nell calls them scrubs, but they're always so dirty. Don't know why she calls them that. The walls of my cell could use a scrubbing. I write on them so much it's starting to look gray instead of white. I write words in my book, because that's what books are for, but I write the holes on my wall. I don't know what they mean, the orderlies say they look Japanese, and where did I learn that, but I haven't ever been to Japan. I write the wrong way around to, straight up and down. But that's the way the holes look. There aren't as many in here as outside, but still, sometimes I see the holes. Perhaps I shouldn't sleep as much in here, and then I'd see them more. It's the drugs. I saw one hole right through into Marilyn, the medicine nurse, and she was that bright green that frightens me so much. All wiggling and made of streaming snakes, pretty if you like snakes. I don't.

**_ _**

**For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang**

I haven't seen the holes in a long time. The doctors say I'm getting better. I'm not, really, but I just learned not to talk about them. I don't talk at all these days. No one notices, I even get marks for being good. It's so much easier to live inside my mind than out here in the real world. The real world seems so much less real when you can close you eyes and walk away from it. Sometimes I wish I could close my eyes forever and just dream about a life where I can talk about holes and green snakes and not have pills given to me and then get locked in my room. Nell can talk about her cuts and blades but I can't talk about snakes. It doesn't seem fair.

** **

**Like iron scourges over Albion: reasonings like vast serpents**

Lois died today. She strangled herself last night with a bedsheet. I'm sad, I guess, since I knew her, but I can't seem to cry like the nurse said I should be doing. It doesn't seem like she's dead. Nell said she heard screaming last night, and that Lois's window was broken and there were claw marks on the walls, but Nell makes things up sometimes just to get attention. Like she has to reassure herself that she's the center of the world, and not made of green snakes like everyone else. I read about Medusa the other day, when the library cart came around. Sometimes I wonder that if I looked in the mirror, and saw the snakes that make my eyes and face and hair, if I would turn to stone. It would be better than snakes. Maybe Lois looked in the mirror, and hated what she saw, and decided to kill herself. I wonder if her father is happy now that he doesn't have a daughter who thinks she's fat.

**_ _**

**Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.**

Somebody's been writing on my wall! I think it must be one of the orderlies, since they don't like me writing on public property. It's _my_ property, so I don't know what their problem is. They don't have to be so mean—if I had some kind of power I wouldn't be mean. At least it's not something bad I could get in trouble for. It might be poetry, but school was a long time ago, so long it's black and white. I think they must have been doing it for a while. I just didn't notice it running together with all the other symbols. I wonder why I think they're symbols now—maybe they mean something. Maybe why Lois died. Or why I'm in here, or the reason for the holes. I try to think about things like that, but then my head starts to hurt, like there's something in there. Two years ago a patient in here rammed a knitting needle into her eyes, one after the other. Maybe she thought there was something in her head too. I'm going to write it down, the rest of it, as long as it appears.

### I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe

I saw my doctor today, and I was very quiet and respectful. He says he's happy with my progress, even though I know I'm running in place. There just isn't anywhere to go. According to him I have borderline dementia with tendencies toward paranoia. I read in a book once that I'm not paranoid if there is someone following me. The black men can't follow me in here, so maybe the doctor's right and it's all in my head. Of course, they could come if they wanted to, but there's no danger in here. Not from us, not from anyone. We're tied up like everyone else, and tied up again in this place. I miss them sometimes, like I knew they were more real than anyone I knew, the people I worked with, my parents. Transparent people. Then the black men with no eyes. Too solid not to be real. But I don't see them anymore, so I don't have to worry.

**And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,**

**_ _**

On the television today, watching in the green room, I saw there was a deal over at the IRS. I don't know what that is, but it was bad, something to do with computers. They got hacked by someone who disappeared. Good for that person, to show the IRS. I remember not liking them before this place happened to me. But I also know that it is hard to hack them—they have good protection like a brick wall. We got a new girl in today, but she's not too interesting. She rocks back and forth and shivers a lot. I gave her my blanket, since she was cold. Her hair is blonde, but it was dyed purple a long time ago. You can see the roots—it's sad, because other than that she looks like everyone else. With purple hair you can stand out in the crowd. If you wanted too, which some want to. Most don't.

**Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth__**

**_ _**

I saw them today, on the television. Nell says I'm being stupid, but I saw them. The IRS was on the news again, and behind all the officers and the workers yelling there they were. They didn't have eyes—I'd forgotten about the ears. I wonder what they're listening to. It's probably nothing I could hear, even if I wanted too. I miss the outside, the more I remember and see it going by without me. The world is going nowhere, I know, no future or past for us, but it seems that my tiny life is going nowhere in here faster than it would outside. No one listens out or in, so I could be silent and unseen out there too. I live inside my head so much I could live without seeing the holes, even if they swallowed the world whole around me. I could live in black and green and not look at greasy sidewalks and faces with no eyes. The green in the television room is starting to look like poison now. At least snakes are alive, even if they infest the world like a cancer.

**In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel works**

**_ _**

I get released in two weeks. I have to take a lot of medication and stay in a house for other people like me, but there will be no walls with pads. I guess no more writing on the walls for me. The lines of words that aren't mine keep appearing in my cell, and I know they mean something, but it's kind of annoying because it tickles my mind like I should remember. Something about the day the white men came and took me. I wonder if the black men took my computer and television. Black men for the machines, white for the people. I wonder if the lines will keep appearing in the house I go to. Since it's an orderly doing it, I think, maybe it will stop before it gets to the end. But I don't think so. As much as you want to stop sometimes, the end is already there, waiting for you. You can't stop it, even if you know what the end is. Maybe the house is part of the end, or a part of the way to my end. I'm tired today, so I think I'll go to bed. It's still light out, but my head is full of thoughts that itch my mind and pull at me chest. I let the new girl keep my blanket; now I wish I hadn't, since tonight I will be very cold.

**Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic__**

This house is nice, although it smells like dust and old people. I get new clothes, or new to me, I think they belonged to someone else. But at least they're not white. The landlord has a dog, and we get along well. He is very friendly, and the landlord lets me feed him. She is a very nice old woman, but sometimes she looks at me like she is sad that I lost my mind. There are other people here too, but they are quiet and work their jobs during the day. I work in a flower shop, spraying the flowers. It means something to me, the white and red flowers, but I can't remember. I've forgotten so much, and every day I forget more. I lie in my bed at night and watch the ceiling dance with green and black, and I see that the pictures I drew on my walls are the same as these that stream and flow down the walls. When they touch my legs or arms I flinch, because they feel so cold, but there's nothing I can do. Is there something past the black that is frozen, something dead? My arm feels dead when the code eats it. I never thought of it as code before. I guess maybe I remember more than I know. What I do know is that I can't sleep at night. Maybe I should go back to the asylum. That's what it was for me, an asylum. I didn't have to think so hard about the things I saw. It feels like I'm really going crazy now, I'm trapped in the big open world. I was a little thing before, now I'm tiny in the sea of green and black. I just want it to go away.

**_ _**

**Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which,**

**_ _**

At the flower shop it's just as bad. Today I saw all my flowers turn green and black. I almost screamed and told the manager, but then I remembered no one wants to hear about it. It's not part of their world. So I yelled inside my head, so no one would hear me, screaming at it to stop, please stop, but it didn't. I don't think anyone heard me. I hope not. Those men with no eyes, they do have ears. Maybe I should find them. I want answers, to why I can't see the world as it should be. I feel and know danger around them, but there isn't a choice left for me now. I thought maybe I could let the green blackness eat me, but I can't keep my mind and live with that at the same time. It was stupid of me to leave the asylum, but I feel like if I go back I will shrivel and die slowly watching the world collapse and feed upon itself. Tomorrow I will clean my room, and walk the streets of the City, and find my own truth. Not the truth of others, but mine and mine alone. This is probably the last time I will write in this book. I won't leave it here, since I don't want the landlord to remember me as I sound here. I wonder who will find it?

** **

****************

** **

_This is a transcription of the pages found on the body of Jane Doe #456. Evidence shows that her physical interface was flawed, given the descriptions found within this piece of evidence. She was terminated when she assaulted an operative during a routine tracking mission. _

_ _

_On a more interesting note, she seems to have actively sought out death at the hands of what she called "men with no eyes". I can only guess she was referring to me, or Agents in general. It was strange, to shoot someone who posed no danger. However, one more death does not mean much to our cause. Her death did not come easily to her, and I speculate as to why she did not choose a more common or succinct method of suicide. Her descriptions of us are also interesting; the viewpoints of the animals we protect are rarely worth the trouble to take notice of. This written account is causing me much deliberation on the nature of humans and their place in this world. Is it better to know the nature of a prison, or to live as most do, in ignorance and denial? As I executed this one, I believe it would have been better if she had never known her truth. She could not have lived, knowing what she did, for very long. Yet it was her failure to uncover the truth that resulted in her death. It does not matter, I know. We would have sought her out in the end. _

_ _

_I question the wisdom of writing this down, but I cannot help but feel a vague regret at my hand in the death of what seems more and more to me like an innocent. Perhaps I am becoming infected by these creatures. Tomorrow I will report in for a diagnostic._

_ _

_The last line of the poem is missing from this transcript. I report it here, in the interest of unity._

_ _

**_Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and peace._**

**_ _**

_I will make a note to review this evidence in its entirety at a later date._

_ _

_File Terminated 8.5-2194 _

_SP-Desig 19/13/9/20/8_


End file.
